BY AARON BARLOW Second-semester students come into their classrooms as jaded veterans knowing exactly what their status is. They know that the teachers of their core curriculum courses (normally, all that they are taking, this year) are, for the most part, either untried graduate students, adjuncts so harried they have no time for their students,…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS Dirty Laundry Week. Tuition Scam Week. Fraud on the Public Week. Tuition Lies Week. Perhaps if national Campus Equity Week had a more descriptive title, it might get the attention of journalists and lawmakers. As it is, October 21–25, 2019 will pass as another week for the nation’s 5,300 wealthy college administrators…
BY CAROLYN BETENSKY It’s Campus Equity Week, a week of action from October 21 to 25 when faculty, students, and other advocates on campuses around the country are calling attention to the increasingly precarious nature of academic employment and its negative implications for higher education. Guest blogger Carolyn Betensky focuses here on obstacles to research…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I had the great pleasure of appearing on “The Politics Classroom,” a radio show and podcast on the University of Illinois at Chicago’s campus radio station, hosted by political science professor Kate Floros. We had a terrific conversation about academic freedom. And my thanks to Kate for the flattering title…
BY HANK REICHMAN When I began work earlier this year on guest-editing the new issue of Academe devoted to “academic freedom around the world,” I was motivated by the recognition that, as I put it in the editor’s note, “Scholarship today is global” and “threats to scholarship outside the United States inevitably affect scholarship here.” …
BY JENNIFER RUTH If you follow the news, you are already familiar with the controversy that erupted over a tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey. To recap: On October 4, Morey tweeted, “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.” The NBA is hugely popular in China. The Hong Kong protests decidedly are not.…
BY LORI ALLEN When the topic of “academic freedom” appears in the UK media, it is often buried in the education section or overlooked until left-leaning publications like the Guardian pick it up. There may be a public perception that academic freedom is a matter primarily for elites, a concern of professors and pontificators worried…
BY AARON BARLOW My colleague on this blog, and one of its founding editors, John K. Wilson, objects to my advocacy of gatekeeping at colleges and universities on free-speech grounds. A decade ago, I would have agreed with him. Now, I do not. Wilson has been consistent; I have not. Part of this is that…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND The new issue of Academe—guest-edited by Henry Reichman, chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure and a contributing editor for Academe Blog—takes a critical look at the mounting global assault on academic freedom. Articles focus on threats to socially engaged scholars abroad, attacks on gender studies in Europe…
BY EMILY K HOBSON AND JENNA N. HANCHEY Since August 2017, when one of our students became a symbol of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) has seen a rise in white nationalist activity and hate speech on our campus. Yet, UNR is just one target in…